Ninja vs Penguin

Penguin July 29th, 2008

Woke up a little before 6 and did my devos.

For breakfast, we had something kind of like oatmeal in milk with some nuts or raisins. It was a little salty, so I added some salt.

After breakfast, I waited for Marcia, gave her my iPod to listen to, and then we went to the Professional Institute.

We waited for Valentina to finish up some of her work before interviewing her. In the meantime, Marcia prepared some of the questions she wanted to ask.

After shooting B-roll with Valentina, we went out on the street and talked to some people. The first guy we saw had a cane. When we talked to him, we discovered that he was an ex-con. He had stabbed a guy and was imprisoned. But now he’s got a family and a good life.

The next few people were shy and didn’t want to be interviewed.

We came across a beggar near the bazaar and talked to him for a bit. It was hard to say how truthful he was because he was asking for money. Marcia also said that he might be an alcoholic.

We grabbed a taxi back to the School of Blessing to wait for lunch. In the meantime, I taught Marcia some Chinese and she taught me some Russian. I pulled out my little black book to start my Russian dictionary. I also shared with her some of my misgivings about this Professional Institute project, but I don’t think she really understood me.

For lunch, we had chicken noodle soup. We also had what was essentially a doughnut.

After lunch, we interviewed Anya, one of Marcia’s best friends. It was a short interview because Marcia didn’t know what to ask.

We went back to the office to hang out before we were to interview Camilla and John Clark, but we were told that they wouldn’t be coming today, and instead, they’d come tomorrow. That pretty much killed our plans for the afternoon. We grabbed some water as we looked for Zuma to interview. She wasn’t around, so we just chilled for a little bit. Eventually, Zuma showed up and shared her story about the French.

Yesterday, around 6, Zuma went to the bazaar to pick up a special chicken she had ordered, but it wasn’t ready yet. While she was there, she saw a French couple being harassed by a Kyrgyz man in one of the shops. He was all chatty, pretending to be friendly. When the man grabbed the Frenchman’s hand, Zuma knew that his intentions were bad, so she said that the French were with her. Zuma knew the store clerk, so she vouched for her.

When they left the store, the Kyrgyz man was waiting for them outside. Zuma told them that it probably wasn’t safe to take a taxi, so she called Kostya to come pick them up. He explained to them that they should probably go with them to reinforce that they were with Zuma.

Back at the office, Zuma called Tanya to come help translate.

Apparently, what happened was that the French couple were supposed to fly out on the 4th, but someone stole their luggage with their clothes, camera, and plane tickets. All they had left was a little bit of cash. They were Christians too and were really glad that they were picked up by the foundation.

The French couple left for Issyk-kul this morning to go to a bank. There, they’d be able to get a plane and return home.

Zuma was shy, so she didn’t let us get her on video.

Afterwards, we sat around and talked as we waited for the rest of the guys to show up for snack time. Eventually, they all showed up. Anita, Renata’s little sister started teaching me other Russian words. I learned the rest of the numbers, up to 1,000 and a few smaller words like pen and water.

For snack time, we had watermelon and gingerbread cookies. Anita was a harsh teacher. She would keep testing me by grabbing my little notebook and taking it away from me.

We had some time before going to the playground, so I put on my iPod, listened to some Muse and drifted into a power nap. It was really refreshing.

We took a public bus to the playground. All the buses here are basically short buses.

There weren’t nearly as many kids at the playground this time and you could tell that the team wasn’t as eager. But they performed Prodigal Son anyway. Towards the end, the music cut out and the rest of the team started humming the tune. It was funny and it took a lot of the kids out of the element. It didn’t help that the team was laughing… a lot.

They explained Prodigal Son and then did “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” with hand motions and then sang “Listen to Our Hearts”. They passed out some Airheads and then went out to play with them.

Instead of playing with the kids, we ended up playing with our translators and staff. It started with simple splashing from the pool and quickly escalated to filling 5 liter bottles and chasing people around. At one point, Bo and Preston tossed one of the girls into the pool.

I was relatively safe because I had my camera, but I wanted to join in so I handed my stuff off to Vicky. Marcia and I chased each other around a bit, but I couldn’t really get her too wet because she was wearing a white shirt. Later, a bunch of us got together and tossed Bo into the pool.

We started walking back to the office. On the way, we passed the mayor’s house and the cinema. We also saw a LOT of marijuana just growing at the side of the road. We kept stopping as we saw bigger and bigger plants. We had known that it grew plentifully, but we had no idea that it was just chilling there by the side of the road.

By the time we got back to the office for dinner, it was 7:30. I felt bad because we were so late. For dinner, we had a different kind of beef vegetable stew. There was some barley, rice, and other stuff in it.

After dinner, I played a little DS before taking a shower. We packed for the mountain camp and typed up a small prayer letter. We also had our first prayer meeting, something that we should’ve been doing since the beginning.

By the time I went to bed, it was 10:30.

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